Addresses the implications of a document found in the Archivio di Stato di Siena which affirms a connection between Farinata degli Uberti, a Florentine conspicuously encountered by Dante the pilgrim in Inferno 10, and the Sienese Ghibellines with whom he and his fellow Florentine Ghibellines joined, in an alliance which produced the Sienese victory at the battle of Montaperti in 1260.

Thirteenth-century India saw a huge revival of religious devotion among the common folk, similar to the waves of religious fervor that swept over late medieval Europe. One of the pillars of this revival was the poet-saint Jnaneshwar, author of an exquisite commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Like his contemporary Dante, Jnaneshwar was a poet of the vernacular, who wrote in Marathi, the language of ordinary villagers, rather than the Sanskrit of the brahmin orthodoxy. Over the centuries, the Jnaneshwari, as (...) his commentary is known, has become a scripture in its own right. Expanding the Gita’s seven hundred verses to approximately nine thousand, and using the images of ordinary life to explain its lofty teachings, Jnaneshwar fashioned from human language one of the most sublime visions of the Absolute that has ever been put into speech. The Jnaneshwari is one of the marvels of world literature. The greatest study of the Jnaneshwar is still this work by the philosopher R. D. Ranade, originally published in 1933. In addition to being a renowned scholar, Ranade was also a mystic and an initiated disciple, and he brings all these broad currents of the Indian tradition to his analysis of the Jnaneshwari. Readers who are sometimes intoxicated by the richness of Jnaneshwar’s imagery, will appreciate the way Ranade has here uncovered the work’s inner structure, and how he has briefly summarized its approach to the Gita’s great themes: action vs. renunciation; devotion and dharma; the form and the formless aspects of God; and the subject dearest to Jnaneshwar’s heart, the nature of the spiritual Master. This book also includes Ranade’s study of Jnaneshwar’s abhangas, his religious songs, as well as an analysis of his magnificent Amritanubhav, “The Nectar of Self-Awareness,” an inspired synthesis of Samkhya and Shaivism. (shrink)

Gercke reads with the MSS. Δ and E: ‘haec adhuc Etruscis philosophisque communia sunt: in illo dissentiunt quod fulmina a Ioue dicunt mitti et tres illi manubias dant.’ Mr. Garrod remarks that the soundness of ‘nouem’ is clinched by the passage he cites from Pliny, N.H. II. 138. But the suggestion he bases on this—to alter ‘illi’ to ‘Ioui’—seems unsatisfactory, as ‘mittiy’ in the first clause is left in crying need of a governing agent; ‘Ioui’ comes in too late in (...) the sentence, and the whole is given an awkward turn that Seneca surely could and would have avoided—by writing ‘fulmina >a Ioue< nouem dicunt mitti.’ Even if ‘a Ioue’ is merely a conjecture of the Δ family, as Mr. Garrod seems to hold, it is a conjecture good enough to pass muster. Perhaps copyists then dropped ‘illi’ from a feeling that it was needless after ‘a Ioue.’ But construction practically demands it. (shrink)

‘We are before Dante’: In this interview, held via email in March 2020 amid the massive outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jean-Luc Nancy leads us on a brief but far-reaching foray through his thought. He succeeds in providing an overview of the subjects that he has raised since the beginning of his career as a philosopher, while maintaining a focus on their pertinence for what we are currently facing in the world today. He supplements his insight that ‘we are (...) before Dante’ with the equally remarkable conclusion: ‘Desire is what is born par excellence’. In between these two propositions, and in between the lines and words documented here – touching upon topics as diverse as the moai statues of Easter Island, the music of Schumann, Wagner, and techno, as well as the writing of Artaud, Proust, and Verlaine – we find an exciting, up-to-date treatment of the question of how to ‘deal with the world intellectually’ without, in doing so, participating in the modern claim to ‘master’ it. Instead, Nancy suggests, we ought to be attentive to what escapes us by its very principle, with philosophy, literature, and art serving as witnesses of what has always been absent from our mind, that is, the sensibility of meaning, in order to become aware that, since we are always already before and after birth, ‘we come from nowhere and everywhere’. This realization enables us to understand the political consequences that it has for our understanding of a world in metamorphosis, including for highly controversial issues such as colonialism, anti-Semitism, the far right, neo-liberalism, and other totalitarian forms that supposedly manifest a return of the myth, as well as its consequences for the insurmountability of Marx. (shrink)

In Victorian Modernism: Pragmatism and the Varieties of Aesthetic Experience Jessica Feldman sheds a pragmatist light on the relation between the Victorian age and Modernism by dislodging truistic notions of Modernism as an art of crisis, rupture, elitism and loss. She examines aesthetic sites of Victorian Modernism - including workrooms, parlours, friendships, and family relations as well as printed texts and paintings - as they develop through interminglings and continuities as well as gaps and breaks. Examining the works of John (...) Ruskin (art critic and social thinker), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (poet and painter), Augusta Evans (best-selling domestic novelist,) and William James (philosopher and psychologist), Feldman relates them to selected twentieth-century creations. She reveals these sentimental, domestic and sublime works to be pragmatist explorations of aesthetic realms. This study, which leads Modernism back into the Victorian age, will be of interest to scholars of literature, art history, and philosophy. (shrink)

This volume forms part of the series of the Princeton Studies in Humanistic Scholarship in America, under the general editorship of Richard Schlatter. Uitti's exposition of theories of language and literature from ancient Greece to contemporary America is oriented toward the proposal for a coordination of studies of language and literature in a sort of modern trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. In the first part of the book, the author concentrates on Platonic "symbolic" and Aristotelian "analytic" ideas about language, (...) and then traces these two currents throughout the Middle Ages, paying special attention to Priscian, Anselm, Abelard, Petrus Hispanus, Dante, and the grammatica speculativa. He then brings the survey up to modern times, examining Descartes, the Port-Royal grammar, Du Marsais, Diderot, and Rousseau. Condillac and Coleridge are treated in detail as representing two modern theories of expression/communication, the one analytic and linguistic, the other synthetic and aesthetic. The second part of this work deals with a history of both linguistics and of American literary criticism, stressing I. A. Richards' descriptivism, new critic theories of metaphor and irony, and Wellek and Warren's Theory of Literature. Uitti singles out Roman Jakobson as being most prophetic in outlining future cooperation of linguistics and literary theory, and in this light analyzes various papers in Style and Language, in particular C. F. Voegelin's and Michel Riffaterre's. This survey of the contemporary American scene points to the fact that ours is a sign-oriented culture, and that recent studies in linguistics and in literary criticism of the poetics type have been sharing the same philosophical assumptions. The author thinks that language and literature studies would function best in the future as disciplines united in the broad matrix of cultural process, and using linguistic categories. He thus shares an oft-expressed hope for a cumulative literary "science," in which individual studies are oriented toward the broader construct. This book is addressed to the nonspecialist, but the expert will profit from Uitti's generous style which opens up new vistas on every page.--C. M. R. (shrink)

Though the philosopher will undoubtedly find this study too elementary for many of his purposes, the student of literature and the generally interested reader will be delighted by this rich source of reference material. Published under the general editorship of Mortimer J. Adler by the Institute for Philosophical Research, The Idea of Love has one of the most accessible formats of the Concepts in Western Thought Series. Preliminary chapters explain critical notions used in later schematizations of various figures, and relate (...) in neat topical divisions controversies about natural and supernatural human love. Next, illustrative chapters present different authors according to whether they hold that love can be either acquisitive or benevolent desire, is only acquisitive desire, must include benevolence, is wholly or primarily judgment. Two final divisions which overlap these give judgmental aspects of wholly and primarily tendential conceptions of love. Expositions within each of these divisions both justify the classification and adequately develop particular sub-themes. In toto, more than forty philosophers, writers, theologians, and psychologists receive a fairly extensive treatment, including generous citations, while brief references are also made to minor figures. Among those given major consideration are Plato, Augustine, Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, Dante, Kierkegaard, Kant, Freud, Jung, and William James ; Plotinus, Andreas Capellanus, Stendhal, Schopenhauer, Santayana, Darwin, Rousseau, Spinoza, Leibniz ; Adam Smith, Hegel, C. S. Lewis, Ortega Y Gasset, Erich Fromm ; Descartes, Hume, Locke, and Pascal. The work is indexed and supplemented by a seven-page bibliography.--C. M. R. (shrink)

The contributors to The Moral of the Story, all preeminent political theorists, are unified by their concern with the instructive power of great literature. This thought-provoking combination of essays explores the polyvalent moral and political impact of classic world literatures on public ethics through the study of some of its major figures-including Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Robert Penn Warren, and Dostoevsky. Positing the uniqueness of literature's ability to promote dialogue on salient moral and intellectual (...) virtues, editor Henry T. Edmonson III has culled together a wide-ranging exploration of such fundamental concerns as the abuse of authority, the nature of good leadership, the significance of "middle class virtues" and the needs of adolescents. This collection reinvigorates the study of classic literature as an endeavor that is not only personally intellectually satisfying, but also an inimitable and unique way to enrich public discourse. (shrink)

Divisé en huit chapitres, le livre de R. Imbach se développe en deux temps. Les chapitres I à IV décrivent les conditions d’émergence d’une philosophie pour les laïcs au Moyen Âge, les milieux qui ont favorisé son développement, les auteurs qui s’y sont consacrés et surtout les idées qui la caractérisent. Cette première moitié du livre trace les contours de ce nouvel objet qu’est la philosophie des laïcs et démontre son intérêt pour les historiens de la pensée. La seconde partie (...) de l’ouvrage, soit les chapitres V à VIII, analyse les idées de celui que R. Imbach considère comme l’un des modèles les plus achevés du philosophe laïque médiéval, Dante Alighieri. L’auteur retrace comment la pensée de Dante s’enracine dans les courants philosophiques de son époque et expose l’originalité de ses idées sur la société, la politique et le langage. Il met en évidence l’unité de sa pensée, qu’elle s’exprime dans des œuvres didactiques comme La Monarchie ou Le Banquet, ou dans La Divine Comédie. Le propos de chaque chapitre du livre est illustré par des extraits en français moderne d’œuvres médiévales. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dante’s Vision and the Circle of KnowledgeAnthony RodaDante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge, by Giuseppe Mazzotta; 328 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, $37.50.Future students of Dante, The Divine Comedy, literature, criticism, the history of ideas, theology, philosophy, and many other disciplines will be in permanent debt to Giuseppe Mazzotta for his keen study of Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. While tracing (...) the principal streams of Western thought which irrigate Dante’s fertile genius, Mazzotta reconstructs the intellectual topography of Dante’s Europe and show how “l’altissimo poeta” reorders and refines it and arrives at a radical reformulation of the foundation of knowledge in contrast to the standard philosophical and theological currents of the times. This new vision of the foundation of knowledge is the central concern of The Divine Comedy which for Mazzotta provides a world view no less monumental than the synthesis of the classical and Judeo-Christian traditions of Thomas Aquinas. Perhaps, more so, for he argues Dante’s great epic provides not only an alternative epistemology but one which captures much more adequately the human historical experience.Vico’s insights, a thorough familiarity of Dante’s sources and his alert appreciation of the unique treatment these sources receive in the context of “la commedia divina” supply Mazzotta with a theoretical framework for his own brilliant critical, historical, and etymological analyses. He marshals these researches around his overriding concern to show that inherent within the Comedy is the view of “poetry as nothing less than the foundation of all possible knowledge” (p. 3). Dante’s radical claim is designed to provide an account which accords with the educational and intellectual development of the individual within history. Consequently for Mazzotta, Dante’s poetic (metaphorical) mode attempts to reconcile what must have been an intellectual and moral landscape of hopeless contradictory systems and projects. Dante’s poem [End Page 194] provides a vivid survey of the breakdown of human bonds, human projects, and human justice and suggests a corrective that escaped the methods of reason, as well as those of the mystic’s. Since both of these are at bottom antihistorical, they attempted to deny conflict and uncertainty (Dewey’s ultimate traits of experience).The above comments should suggest both the general appeal as well as, and I must emphasize, the high level of scholarship Mazzotta exhibits in his project which is arranged into three parts. The first part (Chapter 1–5) is devoted to “poetry and the arts of language,” and a quick glance at these chapters reveals that it is concerned with that part of the liberal arts called the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic). In addition to their educational role, the author examines the role and intricate connections these disciplines have to the central social structures of the times. Consequently, these are not mere sterile academic exercises but serious attempts that show the intimate connections between methods of knowing (discourses) and social structures, especially authority in all of its modes (moral, intellectual, political, etc.). Further, by virtue of this, he shows the need for a reexamination of knowledge which does justice to the lived experiences of the individual and to which the second part (Chapters 6–8) is devoted. Briefly, this means coming to terms with language, memory, imagination, dreams and visions, and that great nightmare, human history. It also invokes the aesthetic (poetic/metaphorical) foundations of all knowledge in contrast to the Cartesian dismissal. The claim, however, enlightening for the Comedy, is controversial as a general tenet and demands will be forthcoming for an evaluation, even though there is much good work in philosophy which lends support to it, e.g., Stephen Pepper’s World Hypotheses, R. G. Collingwood’s The Principles of Art, and Lewis E. Hahn’s A Contextualistic Theory of Perception, etc.In the last part (Chapters 9–11) Mazzotta argues that Dante’s final organizing vision figures the world sub specie ludi. These chapters examine the problems and experiences of order, transgression and exile which for Mazzotta demand a Theologia Ludens whose roots are imbedded deep in Aristotle’s Ethics and expressed by the virtue of eutrapelia, “a... (shrink)

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

The car has become ubiquitous in late modern society and has become the leading object in the ordinary social relations of mobility. Despite its centrality to the culture and material form of modern societies, the relationship between the car and human beings has remained largely unexplored by sociology. This article argues that cars are combined with their drivers into an assemblage, the ‘driver-car’, which has become a form of social being that brings about distinctive social actions in modern society – (...) driving, transporting, parking, consuming, polluting, killing, communicating and so on. To understand the nature of this assemblage a number of theoretical perspectives that describe the interaction and collaboration between human beings and complex objects are explored; the process of driving, ‘affordance’, actor-network theory, and the embodied relationship between driver and car. This theoretical account of the driver-car is intended as a preliminary to the empirical investigation of the place of the driver-car in modern societies. (shrink)

Will Kymlicka ha sido considerado como compatibilizador de liberales y comunitaristas en cuanto a los derechos de las minorías. Su distinción entre derechos de grupo como protecciones externas y como restricciones internas buscó dar cuenta de las reivindicaciones minoritarias sin vulnerar el principio liberal de autonomía. En este artículo se buscan dos objetivos: primero, adoptar una perspectiva crítica, al afirmar que tal distinción soslaya el eje central de la discusión, esto es, la problemática de la titularidad del derecho, y, segundo, (...) proponer una nueva clasificación de los derechos aplicables a las minorías que sea capaz de servir de modelo para futuros diseños institucionales. Will Kymlicka has attempted to harmonize the positions of liberals and communitarians with respect to minority rights. His distinction between group rights as external protections and internal restrictions sought to account for minority vindications without violating the liberal principle of autonomy. The objective of this article is twofold: first, to adopt a critical perspective by arguing that said distinction avoids the core of the discussion, that is, the issue of ownership of rights, and, second, to proposed a new classification of rights applicable to minorities that can serve as a model for future institutional designs. Will Kymlicka tem sido considerado como compatibilizador de liberais e comunitaristas quanto aos direitos das minorias. Sua distinção entre direitos de grupo como proteções externas e como restrições internas pretendeu dar conta das reivindicações minoritárias sem vulnerar o princípio liberal de autonomia. Este artigo apresenta dois objetivos: primeiro, adotar uma perspectiva crítica ao afirmar que essa distinção elude o eixo central da discussão, isto é, a problemática da titularidade do direito; segundo, propor uma nova classificação dos direitos aplicáveis à s minorias que seja capaz de servir de modelo para futuros desenhos institucionais. (shrink)

Epistemic limitations concerning prediction and explanation of the behaviour of robots that learn from experience are selectively examined by reference to machine learning methods and computational theories of supervised inductive learning. Moral responsibility and liability ascription problems concerning damages caused by learning robot actions are discussed in the light of these epistemic limitations. In shaping responsibility ascription policies one has to take into account the fact that robots and softbots - by combining learning with autonomy, pro-activity, reasoning, and planning - (...) can enter cognitive interactions that human beings have not experienced with any other non-human system. (shrink)

R.I.G Hughes offers the first detailed and accessible analysis of the Hilbert-space models used in quantum theory and explains why they are so successful.

Carroll Izard’s theoretical and empirical work has played a preeminent role in energizing the renascence in the study of the emotions and emotional development in normality and pathology. A brief historical overview of his career is presented. Izard’s differential emotions theory has exerted influence in a number of domains and disciplines. Illustrations are provided from research and prevention in developmental psychology and developmental psychopathology. Personal recollections of Cal Izard are provided showing that Izard is not only an influential theoretician and (...) researcher, but also a wonderful emotional being. (shrink)

The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion.

Psychopathy is typically seen as a trait that is undesirable in any context, including the workplace. But several authors have suggested that people high in psychopathy might possess resources that preserve their ability to perform well in stressful contexts. We consider the possibility that primary psychopathy is adaptive—for the employee, if not for the organization—under conditions of abusive supervision. In particular, we draw from the multimotive model of interpersonal threat and the theory of purposeful work behavior to argue that high (...) primary psychopathy individuals possess characteristics that enable them to experience higher levels of well-being and lower levels of anger than their peers under abusive supervisors. Based on a scenario study and a time-lagged field study, we found support for a model in which abusive supervision moderates the relationships between primary psychopathy and positive work-related outcomes, such that these relationships are positive under conditions of abusive supervision and either diminished or negative under conditions of low abusive supervision. Abusive supervision also affected the relationship between primary psychopathy and anger in the field study such that high primary psychopathy individuals were less angry under more abusive supervisors. Thus, there appears to be some credence to the notion of a “psychopathic advantage” in that primary psychopaths do have access to greater psychological resources than their peers under abusive supervision. However, these findings also suggest that abusive supervisors may empower employees with characteristics that hold strong potential to damage the organization and its stakeholders. (shrink)

KOHAN, Walter Omar. Infância. Entre a Educação e a Filosofia. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2003.

No âmbito da educação institucional a filosofia tem sido entendida como elemento de cultura com data de nascimento na história. É neste sentido que ela se tornou uma tradição: a tradição de pensar conceitualmente o mundo, pensá-lo na sua universalidade. Por ser uma tradição é que a filosofia permanece em nosso meio; passou de geração para geração e de cultura para cultura. É certo que nessas passagens sofreu transformações (desterritorializações e reterritorializações) que dizem respeito tanto ao filosofar como ao seu (...) produto, as diferentes filosofias. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction - the Small Screen and Morality - Morality on Television - Sociology and the Moral OrderTelevisuality: Style and the Small ScreenThe Phenomenology of Television - Society and the Small Screen - Mediating Morality- Television and the Imaginary - Conclusion.

Critical theory has left an indelible mark on postwar social thought. But what are the relations between critical theory and 'the cultural turn' ? How did critical theory inform later French critical theorists, such as Lefebvre, Barthes and Baudrillard? This accomplished and accessible book: - Demonstrates the origins of critical theory in the Marxian analysis of the capitalist mode of production and Freudian psychoanalysis - Clearly explains the main achievements of critical theory - Elucidates how critical theory defines culture as (...) a system that constrains and alienates the individual - Explores the potential for social change and personal emancipation in the critical heritage. The author locates the importance of myth and reason, the significance of sexuality, the place of work, the difference between art and entertainment, the nature of everyday life and the relationship between knowledge and action. The result is a lucid and informative text which will appeal to all students interested in the critical traditions of social thought. (shrink)

This essay investigates Matteo Liberatore from an historical point of view. As a representative of conventional and intransigent Catholicism, Liberatore tends to be overlooked in the history books. He was a Jesuit, editor of La Civiltà Cattolica, and in forty years he wrote almost 400 articles. He is an interesting figure above all because he recognized that the end of the Papal States presented an opportunity and not a disaster for the papacy. As editor of the review, Liberatore proposed the (...) idea of a papacy that was free from the polemics associated with temporal power and consequently able to speak to the contemporary world. It is no accident that it was to him that Leo XIII turned to draw up the last draft of the encyclical Rerum novarum. This encyclical built on the insight that the church had to recommence speaking to the modern world and concentrated its reflection on the place where man was mainly found to live between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the factory and the world of employment. (shrink)

This text suggests that imagination is a powerful tool that can be used creatively or destructively, and argues that by becoming more conscious of how we use fantasy and are affected by it, we can learn to apply imagination more constructively.

Edizione e traduzione italiana della Questio de aqua et terra di Dante Alighieri.

Dante's Convivio, composed in exile between 1304 and 1307, is a series of self-commentaries on three of Dante's long poems. These allegorical love poems and philosophical verse become the basis for philosophical, literary, moral, and political exposition. The prose is written in Italian so that those who were not educated in Latin could take part in what Dante called his 'banquet of knowledge'. In this edition, eminent Dante translator-scholar Andrew Frisardi offers the first fully annotated translation (...) of the work into English, with an extensive introduction, making Dante's often complex writings accessible to scholars and students. The parallel Italian text is also included for the first time in an English translation of the Convivio. Readers of this work can gain a strong understanding of the philosophical themes across Dante's work, including the Divine Comedy, as well as the logic, politics and science of his time. (shrink)

In this paper a view of self-deception is given which eliminates the paradox usually associated with self-deception.Self-deception is distinguished from ignorance, false belief, wishful thinking, and reluctance to believe. Through an analysis of ordinary language, the role of knowing and believing in self-deception is examined as well as the notion of the self-deceived person "persuading himself to believe." The role of intention and the function of "self" in "self-deception" is analyzed through a discussion of evidence and interpretation.It is shown that (...) the self-deceived person does not know or even believe p, but is, nevertheless, properly characterized as "self-deceived." It is argued that the self-deceived person believes not-p and does not know, or even believe, p. The paradox turns out to be more apparent than real. (shrink)